Group wants to Inspire Amarillo

Panhandle Twenty/20 launches anti-poverty campaign

Poverty in Potter County is climbing at a faster rate than in the state, affecting one in four people in the county in 2007.
Representatives of Panhandle Twenty/20 used the statistic from the Center for Public Priorities today in a discussion launching a new initiative to create pathways out of poverty.
Panhandle Twenty/20 Board President Russell Lowery-Hart, who led the conversation at the Amarillo College Business and Industry Center, noted the numbers pre-date the current economic downturn.
“We’re going to get eaten alive if we cannot close that gap,” he said.
The discussion capped an Inspire Amarillo tour during which two busloads of community leaders drove the streets of neighborhoods where poverty is most evident, hearing facts about and stories of people in need.
Panhandle Twenty/20 is an organization under the Amarillo Area Foundation umbrella that works on broad community issues. Its latest mission is the state of the family in Amarillo and the Texas Panhandle.
“If people think poverty doesn’t impact them, they haven’t looked around,” the group’s director, Anette Carlisle, said.
Poverty affects a larger group than typically brought to mind, participants said.
“We’re not just talking about people not having jobs,” said Frankie Francel, executive director of United Way of Amarillo & Canyon. “The working poor (demographic) is huge in our community."
Francel said the 211 Texas hotline in Amarillo gets about 200 calls daily. The hotline is operated through a Texas Health and Human Services Commission program
“But are the people that have jobs calling? Are the people that could use just a little bit of help calling? Probably not,” she said. “It isn’t that the help isn’t there.”
People who believe they should be able to subsist on their own are reluctant to call for help, Francel said.
“It’s a struggle for a lot of people in the community to make it,” she said. “And they’re not necessarily the homeless ... They’re the people who work in your office.”
Panhandle Twenty/20 and a number of social service agencies and nonprofits plan a daylong Opportunity Conference Oct. 16 at the Central Church of Christ to connect people who need assistance with volunteers who can help build their hope, motivation and skills to transition out of poverty.
The volunteers will have undergone four-hour training sessions to be “navigators.”
The training, described as intense, will help them understand “the challenges of living in poverty, as well as the associative stigmas and misconceptions,” according to Panhandle Twenty/20 information.
“You have to be nonjudgmental. And you have to have the ability and desire to listen to people so that you can help them,” said Pat Cathcart, a Twenty/20 board member who is chairing the navigator recruitment and training.
The campaign will take the efforts of volunteers, organizations and governments, Lowery-Hart said.
Sharon Miner, executive director of Leadership Amarillo & Canyon, also pushed for churches to become involved.
“We can’t have this kind of discussion without bringing the clergy to the table,” she said. “Whether it be a Trinity (Fellowship) or the little churches in the communities we were just in. They have influence and effect in those communities.”
For information about the new campaign or to volunteer for training, visit www.panhandle2020.org.